Featuring Second Life Homes

Author: Whiskey Monday

An artist friend, Eupalinos Ugajin, offered his home space to be featured here, and I’ve been struggling with how to do it justice. I’ve visited a dozen times, trying to shoot photos, but photos just don’t work for his non-traditional space. His home requires video, and that is absolutely not my thing. I’m terrible at it, and after doing a couple of test videos I can say that I’m worse than I thought I was. And so, while working on this problem in my head, I’ve been puttering around my own home. It’s finally finished enough to show off a bit.

View full sized photos in all of their glory at the end of this post.

Confession: I am a windlight addict. I bet many of you are, too. I can spend hours cycling through windlights; I take every photo in multiple lights. For each photo that I post here or on my Flickr feed, I’ve taken at least thirty others in different lights. And it’s not just when I’m taking photos – every time I land somewhere new, I check to see what the region looks like in their preset windlight, and then I play around to find what I like best. Then I forget why I landed there and wander around aimlessly until I either remember or find something else shiny to look at. Wren Noir’s home is a windlight lover’s dream.

RL work is keeping me mostly AFK lately, so I haven’t had a chance to poke around and perv any new homes to post here. I’ve received more applications for homes to feature than I ever imagined I would; I could post a home every day for months and still not get through them all. If you’ve sent me a note regarding your home, I got it! I’m just slammed with work for the next couple of weeks. I’ll come back to you, promise!

View full sized photos in all of their glory at the end of this post.

I’ve spent my entire life surrounded by art. I was raised by an artist and then raised one myself and neither of them creates what you might call pretty, Hang-Over-the-Sofa Art. My mother’s art is bold and raw and often difficult to look at. My daughter’s work is intense and, while beautiful, it is not conventionally pretty. And I love everything they’ve ever created. I am a fan of the odd, the weird and dark, which is why I was instantly in awe of Noirran Marx’s home when I landed there.

View full size photos in all of their glory at the end of this post.

Marianne McCann’s home presented several challenges for me, and I do love challenges. But before we get into the photos and her house, I’m going to say a few things. I want to make this blog about the residents and their homes, but inevitably my own viewpoints and opinions will be here as well, it seems. I’m okay with that.

A side note to you, dear reader, as this new blog finds its final shape and form:

I love the way Second Life looks. SL has a quirky, real-but-unreal quality to it and I’m not trying to change that in my photos. I like for my photos, both here and my more personal pieces, to look like Second Life. There are photographers who, through clever use of windlight and filters, can make SL look just like RL – and those are lovely, too. But they’re not my taste nor my style. You won’t find ultra-realism here. You’ll find Second Life as it looks through my viewer, which is exactly how I like to see it. I hope you enjoy it, as well.

View full size photos in all of their glory at the end of this post.

Winter Jefferson and Magenta DeVinna are my friends, but even if I didn’t know them I would still get a sense of who they are just from visiting their home. They graciously volunteered their house to be my first victim at this blog, and I couldn’t have asked for a better home to feature.

Second Life is a user created world. In the big sense, that means the entire SL universe has been created by the residents who live there. That’s an incredible thing – SL is a work of art in which we can live and have relationships and create our own works of art.

The Second Life world is vast, but it’s made up of so many smaller pieces, each belonging to a resident who has in some way made it their home. It’s these smaller, more personal spaces that interest me. This isn’t a blog about me, it’s a blog about you and the world you’ve helped create. It’s about your home and your style and the things you choose to surround yourself with in your Second Life.

In SL we choose our own name, our own body, our own story, and our own style. Our Second Lives are about as personal as it gets. And when we create a home in second life, it can be whatever we wish. While we may be somewhat limited by funds or availability of products, in a user created world we are really only limited by our own imaginations.

I’ve had some version of a home most of my eleven years in Second Life. My SL world began as a very small window; I had a crap computer that wouldn’t rezz anything greater than a draw distance of 22, and I certainly couldn’t take photos. Having my own home was a way to control my environment and keep my world small enough to fit within my graphics capabilities.

Even back then, before mesh and the bazillions of SL décor creators, making a home in SL was a wonderful experience. I’ve loved every home I’ve had over the years.

In addition to my own homes, I’ve been fascinated with other SL homes. From space stations to underwater grottos, tiny cabins to huge castles, furry warrens to a mixture of all of these- there are as many styles of homes as there are styles of residents. And while we may all be shopping from the same creator’s marketplace, each home in SL is one-of-a-kind and a direct reflection of the resident who built it.

I’m currently working on my own new home in Second Life (WIP photos in this post), so it will be featured in a future post. In the meantime, I’ll be using the homes of my friends as guinea pigs for these first few posts here at CTRL-SHIFT-H. I want to show off the homes that residents have chosen in SL and explore each unique style.

If you’d like to submit your own home to be featured here, please visit this page. I don’t promise to feature every home submitted, but I do promise to get back to you within a few days.

Thanks for visiting, for reading, and for helping to create the world of art we all enjoy in SL. Stayed tuned!